“I wanted to go up against him, Firas [Zahabi], the whole TriStar team. They got a real good thing going on up there and I wanted to try and take a crack at it. You know I had the fight with them, I think it was a few years ago now, and I really feel that I could have put on a better performance and I want to give it another shot and I want to walk away after that knowing that everything was left in the Octagon.”

Penn said the challenge from MacDonald was just the motivation he needed to get back inside the Octagon. Penn said he has a lot of Canadian fans but there are also a lot of Canadian fight fans who were hard on him for some of the things he said leading up to his UFC 94 fight with Georges St-Pierre.

Being that his fight with MacDonald will take place at UFC 152 in Toronto, Ontario, Penn said he wants to show them he is someone to be reckoned with and it’s not going to be a walk-through for MacDonald. He also said he wants redemption for the UFC 94 loss to St-Pierre and he wants to let everyone who shows up in Toronto “who the hell B.J. Penn is”.